NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART: CAFÉS RENOVATION PROJECT

Heewon Ra Department of Interior Design

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Art Corcoran College of Art and Design Washington DC Spring 2011 ii Thesis Statement

Two new cafés at the National Gallery’s West Building and East Building will enhance the Gallery’s stature as a leading cultural institution in Washington by creating unique interiors which respond to the aesthetics of each building, and by spreading knowledge about art to the broader audience.

iii A b s t r a c t

The art museum has been an important cultural center of civilized society since its inception in the eighteenth century. In the past, art museums commonly presented themselves as sacred spaces for spiritual nourishment. Today, however, art museums offer great shopping and food in conjunction with art to draw larger audiences. In spite of criticism from the museum professionals, the retail shops and restaurants have become an integral part of the mainstream museum experience.

This project is to redesign two existing cafés at the National Gallery of Art in Washing- ton D.C.. The Gallery consists of two adjacent buildings -- the neoclassical West Building and the modern East Building -- and the Sculpture Garden. This project includes the Garden Café in the West Building and the Terrace Café in the East Building. The Garden Café is located in the center of ground level. In spite of the great accessibility, its boundaries are open to pass- through traffic pattern. As a result, it has a rushed ambience of a food court rather than a fine dining facility. In addition, it obstructs the visitor’s traffic pattern. On the other hand, the

Terrace Café, which is tucked in the fourth floor in the East Building, suffered from the lack of visibility . In turn, it failed to patronize the facility.

Two new cafés are designed not only to reflect each building’s unique collections and atmosphere, but also to help further the Gallery’s mission: fostering understanding of works of art. The Gallery achieves this by disseminating knowledge about art to visitors and enhancing their aesthetic experience.

iv Intensive research about the National Gallery’s history, architecture and collection, and the study of museum theories and practices set the direction for the design of the two new cafés.

The neoclassical West Building houses major exhibition galleries. Its collection focuses on European art. The West Builidng’s main function is to provide a serene place for the contemplation of art. It offers a respite from the tensions and pressures of hectic city life. The new dining facility, Café Repose, aims to perform the same function as a shelter removed from the outside world. The design inspiration came directly from the Gallery’s own collection: John Singer Sargent’s painting, Repose. This painting’s gracious setting and

Europeanism mirror the atmosphere of the West Building. By creating a unique and elegant interior, this café is intended to enhance the visitor’s aesthetic experience.

On the other hand, the modern style East Building houses not only the Gallery’s mod- ern and contemporary art collection, but also includes a research center. One of the major functions of the East Building is education. To foster understanding of contemporary art, a book café is envisioned for this space. For the visual inspiration, the Minimalism sculptures were selected. By using the Minimalism artists’ powerful visual vocabularies and theories, this café responds to the aesthetic and mission of the East Building.

v Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I. National Gallery of Art: History, Architecture and Collection 7

1. West Building 7

2. East Building 16

II. Typology Study 27

The Modern 27

Restaurant Georges 29

Café Sabarsky and Café Fledemaus 31

III. Site Analysis and Design Scope 33

1. West Building 33

2. East Building 35

IV. Design Development 36

1. West Building: Café Repose 36

2. East Building: Book Café 46

Conclusion 56

List of Illustration 58

Notes 59

Bibliography 64 Introduction

In the late 1980s, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London promoted its café with the advertisement, “An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached.”1 Thirty years ago, this bold campaign provoked harsh criticisms from conservative critics and museum professionals alike. In the past, art museums presented themselves as pristine environments

-- unblemished by commercial concerns -- for contemplating works of art. In the late nineteenth century England, social critics such as John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold viewed art as “a remedy for soulless materialism.” 2

This traditional concept of the art museum as a sacred space no longer meets the needs of the museum nor that of today’s visitor. Andrew McClellan, author of The Art

Museum: From Boullée to Bilbao, says that “rising costs, shrinking government subsidies, and an uncertain economy have compelled museums everywhere to behave more like businesses, expand their programs and buildings, and mount crowd-pleasing exhibitions.” 3

According to him, even museums with strong permanent collections are struggling to attract more visitors to their institutions. Art museums today not only compete with other museums, but also with theme parks and shopping malls for an audience. Staunchly business-minded

Thomas Kren, former director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, suggests that “a suc- cessful twenty-first-century museum should include -- besides a strong collection of art -- a great building, multiple special exhibitions, shops, and eating opportunities.” 4

In the past, cafés and restaurants in art museums were considered merely as amenities where visitors could rest and refresh. Now, they are becoming integral parts of the visitor

1 experience. It is not uncommon to see top-rated chefs and restaurateurs collaborate with leading architectural firms to design dining facilities in museums. For new museums, such as the Neue Galerie, cafés are a branding opportunity. For established museums, cafés help en- hance their image to new and returning visitors. Arthur Manask, president of a foodservice consulting firm, Manask & Associates, asserts that “while we can’t state that a desire for memorable dining experience is an exclusive motivator, it would be wrong to undervalue the relationship between cultural education and hospitality service.” 5 According to him, many museum directors want their restaurants to draw people to their institutions. But not all of these museums look at dining facilities as major sources of revenue. In fact, Manask points out that the restaurants are not profit centers and generate “relatively small return that usually covers the basic costs of utilities, repairs, and maintenance.” 6 In this way, the museum café is valuable more as an enhancement to the overall visitor experience than as a profit center.

This thesis project will focus on the design of two existing cafés at the National

Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.. The National Gallery encompasses two adjacent buildings

-- the original neoclassical West Building, and the modern East Building by I.M. Pei -- and the

Sculpture Garden. Altogether there are four cafés: the Garden Café on the ground level in the

West Building, the Terrace Café on the fourth level in the East Building, the Pavilion Café at the Sculpture Garden and the Cascade Café on the concourse level between two buildings.

J. Carter Brown, the ambitious and dynamic former director, was very interested in planning foodservice facilities. He wanted to have cafés which could not only make the Gallery visit

2 pleasurable but also “glamorize the Gallery public facilities”. 7 These four cafés were created during his tenure. This project includes the Garden Café and the Terrace Café. The first was opened in 1982 and the latter in 1978. There have been no major renovations since then.

According to Manask, the restaurant industry recommends that restaurateurs

reconceptualize their venues every seven years on average, and that this guideline should apply to museum restaurants as well. Since dining trends and customer tastes are continuously evolving, he says, museum administrators need to also stay current with these changes in order to compete with neighboring restaurants. 8 Today, it is common for an upscale urban art museum to have a fine dining facility, such as The Modern at The Museum of Modern Art, Café Sabarsky at the Neue Gallery, and 20.21 at the Walker Art Center. These restaurants attract people to the museums and are an important part of the visitor experience. The Garden Café at the West Building is a full-service restaurant with a highly accessible location. Its design and facility, however, are quite outdated and out of step with current restaurant trends. In addition, the café suffers from the fact that its boundaries are open to pass-through traffic patterns, which in turn results in a rushed experience. It serves mainly as rest stop where people can eat and rest, rather than a destination space with its own distinctive environment. It is hardly one of the unforgettable features of the Gallery. The

Terrace Café in the East Building retains I.M. Pei’s original design. Even though it has excellent views of the Mall and the atrium, it is so remote from the visitors’ main traffic patterns that few even know its existence. The café recently closed and is currently being used as office space.

3 This project started with many questions: What is the mission of the National Gallery?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of its collection? What can, or should, the National

Gallery do as a leading cultural institution in the nation’s capital? What might a café in the

Gallery look like? Can it promote the Gallery’s mission? If so, how? If the main function of art is to stimulate and enlighten the human eye and spirit, can a café in the art museum perform the same function?

The redesign of the two cafés is intended to embrace the National Gallery’s mission.

The mission of the National Gallery has four prongs: preserving, collecting, exhibiting, and fostering understanding of works of art. According to the Gallery, it fosters understanding of works of art in two ways: by disseminating the knowledge about art “to its visitors and to the widest possible student and general public” and by enhancing the visitor’s aesthetic experience. 9 It says that ancillary programs such as concerts and changing horticulture displays serve to enhance the visitor’s overall aesthetic experience. The newly redesigned cafés, likewise, aim to foster understanding of works of art.

The West Building houses major exhibition galleries. The main function of this building is to provide a serene environment to contemplate great works of art. For this building, a suitable fine dining restaurant is envisioned. This restaurant will provide a comfortable dining space and enhance the visitor’s aesthetic experience by creating an elegant and unique interior. The East Building not only houses the National Gallery’s modern and contemporary collection, but also includes a great art research library. One of the major functions of this building is education. This library, however, has limited public accessibility.

4 In order to disseminate knowledge “to the widest possible student and general public”, a book café is designed for the East Building.

Inspiration for each café comes directly from the Gallery’s collection. For the West

Building’s fine restaurant, John Singer Sargent’sRepose (1911) was selected. In the West

Building, the European influences dominate in architecture and in collection. Sargent was an expatriate American in Europe. He was one of the most Europeanized American painters of his time. The European characters in his work attracted many commissions among American social elites. His own identity and a body of work resemble that of the West Building.

The East Building’s café design is inspired by Minimalism art. Minimalism is the purely

American art movement which emerged in the 1960s. Contrast to the West Building, the East

Building is led by American art. The time difference between the two buildings explains this phenomenon. The West Building opened in 1941, whereas the East Building opened in 1978.

Before World War II, American art was thought to be provincial compared to European art.

After 1945, however, American art found its own voice. There is a strong visual resemblance between Minimalism art and I.M. Pei’s modern East Building which was designed in the late

1960s.

Intensive research about the National Gallery’s history, architecture and collection, as well as the study of museum theories and practices set the direction for design criteria for the two cafés. The research was primarily based on four books: America’s National Gallery of Art by Philip Kopper, A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art edited by Anthony Alofsin, The Art Museum From Boullée to Bilbao by Andrew McClellan,

5 and The Complete Guide to Foodservice in Cultural Institutions by Arthur M. Manask. Kopper’s book provides valuable background information about the National Gallery’s origin, founder, major donors, architect, directors, collection and buildings. A Modernist Museum in Perspective consists of several insightful essays about the East Building. The building is viewed from a variety of perspectives that, in aggregate, speak to the social, political, cultural and architectural background behind I.M. Pei’s building. McClellan’s book is a comprehensive study of the evolution of the art museum as a social institution. Manask’s book provides practical information about designing foodservice facilities within a museum context. In addition to these books, an interview with National Gallery architect, Donna Kirk, provided valuable insights into the problems, as well as the potential, of the site.

Chapter I provides an overview of the National Gallery’s history, architecture, and collection. Chapter II explores successful case studies of museum restaurants, including The

Modern at The Museum of Modern Art, Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie in New York, and the George at the Pompidou Center in Paris. Chapter III takes on practical issues such as site challenges and possibilities, design scope, and facility equipment for dining and kitchen programs. Chapter IV covers the project’s design development. It shows the visual evolution from the inspirational art works -- John Singer Sargent’s Repose and Minimalism art -- to the actual café spaces.

This project aims to design two cafés which reflect the unique collections and atmosphere of each building at the National Gallery. These cafés are designed to embrace and further the Gallery’s mission, and in doing so, enhance its image as the leading cultural institution in Washington D.C..

6 I. National Gallery of Art: History, Architecture and Collection

1. West Building

H i s t o r y

The creation of the National Gallery in Washington DC was unusual by conventional standards. It did not originate through a directive from the state, 10 but from the wish of an individual private person. The National Gallery was established by Congress in 1937 with the gift of financer and art collector Andrew Mellon (1855-1937), an extraordinarily successful banker and businessman. He belonged to the generation that amassed unprecedented fortunes along with John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and

Henry Clay Frick. He served as Secretary of Treasury under the Harding administration from

1921 to 1931. Afterwards, he worked as the American ambassador in London for a brief period.

Mellon had collected art since the turn of the century. His personal collection specialized in Old Masters and British portraits. According to Philip Kopper, when Mellon worked as Secretary of Treasury, he had been ashamed of the lack of cultural amenities in

Washington. When foreign dignitaries visited and asked to see America’s art treasures, he took

11 them to his own apartment. In London, Mellon continued to amass a great collection of

European Old Masters paintings. In 1931, he purchased twenty-one masterpieces from the

Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, which included works of Botticelli, Raphael, Perugino, Titian,

Van Dyck, Rembrandt and others. Mellon was quite an Anglophile, visiting frequently London

12 over a period of fifty years. In particular, Mellon loved in Britain the National Gallery in

7 Trafalgar Square. David Finley, the first director of the National Gallery of Art in

Washington, wrote that “Everything there appealed to him: the size, the installation, the high level of quality.” 13 According to Kopper, Mellon viewed the National Gallery in London as an ideal museum. It became the model of the National Gallery of Art in Washington. 14

In 1936, Mellon offered to donate his art collection to the nation and build an art museum. In his letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he stipulated that the museum should not bear his name and it “shall be known as ‘The National Art Gallery’ or by such other name as may appropriately identify it as a gallery of art of the National Government.” 15

He hoped this museum would encourage other collectors to contribute works of art to form a great national collection. Mellon promised to fund an endowment for future acquisitions which “shall be limited to objects of the highest standard of quality.” 16 He did not want his gift to be controlled by federal bureaucrats, to this end, insisted that a separate Board of

Trustees would govern the Gallery. Mellon also wanted to build the Gallery on the Mall to maximize accessibility and ensure that the collection would be protected by public authorities. As Kopper points out, “the National Gallery is unique because of the singular character that emerged from the unusual circumstances of its creation, and the sagacity of its creator in deal making, and the tenacity of the attorneys who represented him.” 17

There were severe objections in Congress. Mellon’s manipulative proposal provoked criticism. Senator Tom Cornally argued that if the nation accepted Mellon’s gift, it would have

18 to be run as he wanted it to be run. Despites such strong opposition, however, Congress passed the legislation to establish the National Gallery of Art as an independent bureau within the Smithsonian Institution in 1937.

8 Architecture

Mellon commissioned John Russell Pope to design the National Gallery. Trained at

Columbia University and Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Pope was a staunch proponent of neoclassicism. Mellon had worked with Pope when he was in charge of the Federal Triangle

19 project as Secretary of Treasury. For this huge federal building project, Pope had designed the National Archives. He was one of the most conservative architects of his time.

According to Kopper, “Pope was a deft and ubiquitous borrower of antique motifs, which he

20 meant to honor by imitation, at the same time enhancing his own world and posterity’s.”

For the National Gallery, Pope conceived a grand symmetrical Beaux-Arts plan around the central rotunda. (fig. 1)

1. John Russell Pope’s sketch for the National Gallery West Building, 1938. From Phillip Kopper, America’s National Gallery of Art (New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991).

9 According to McClellan, the art museum has been viewed as a place of refuge in the modern industrial city dating back to the nineteenth century. “As a result”, he notes, “the inspirational spaces and classical style of the Beaux-Arts palace gained added symbolic authority as the counterweight to the deadening routine of modern manufacturing and the inequities of capitalism. Clarity of plan, site adaptation, and easy balance of function and symbolism became the hallmarks of Beaux-Arts museum design.” 21

For the National Gallery, Pope designed a grand formal entrance on the Mall with monumental stairs. After passing through thirty feet tall bronze doors and narrow vestibule, the visitor enters the grand space of central domed rotunda. Left and right wings extend from the rotunda to create the building’s grand axis. Intimate galleries are arranged around these two long corridors.

Several European buildings seemed to inspire Pope’s design for the National Gallery.

William J. Williams, who worked at the Gallery’s education department believes the building

“incorporates elements of the architecture of ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance as well as the late eighteenth through early nineteenth-century neoclassical styles of France,

Germany, Britain and America.” 22 Carter-Brown suggested Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes

Museum (fig. 2) in Berlin and the Prado in Madrid, with its central dome and two wings, might have inspired Pope’s design.23 According to McClellan, the Altes Museum (1831) inspired many Beaux-Art style art museums. Schinkel’s domed rotunda, McClellan says, works as “a thrilling space of inspiration and transition from exterior to interior.” 24 Its primary function is

“to entice and impress” 25 the public.

10 2. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin From Andrew McClellan, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2008)

The grand rotunda at the National Gallery performs the same functions: impress and entice the visitor. McClellan argues that locating the Gallery on Washington’s Mall strategically links it architecturally and spatially to institutional power and national identity. 26 When the building opened in 1941, it was said to be the largest marble building in the world. 27 It is comprised of 500,000 square feet, surpassing its inspiration, London’s National Gallery.

11 C o l l e c t i o n

The title ‘National Gallery of Art’ defines “its contents as the nation’s art.”28 It misleads people to think that the collection of the Gallery represents America. In fact, as McClellan points out, the collection of National Gallery reflects the tastes of the social elites who donated their collections. 29 The focus of the West Building’s collection is European art. Major donors of the time avidly acquired European art and paid little attention to American artists.

Prior to World War II, America was widely considered a young country in every cultural sense. 30 According to McClellan, the early generations of American collectors, who were mostly industrialists and merchants, competitively purchased European art and supported fine art museums “to disprove” prejudiced Europeans, such as Matthew Arnold who asserted that “the United States had no culture.” 31 Behind these collectors’ philanthropy, Gail Stavitsky, curator of Montclair Art Museum, argues, “lies a complex variety of motivations, including art as social prestige and profitable investment, connoisseurship and aesthetic pleasure, as well as populist ideals of civic duty, public education and the encouragement of creativity.” 32

Andrew Mellon wanted Washington D.C. to merit the attention of visiting foreign dignitaries as a political and cultural center. He hoped the new National Gallery would draw donations from other collectors who would follow his lead. This indeed happened, with major donations from Samuel H. Kress, Joseph Widener, Chester Dale, Lessing J. Rosenwald and individual gifts from hundreds of other donors, laying the foundation for the Gallery’s present day collection.

12 Samuel H. Kress was a merchant, a self-made millionaire who founded S.H. Kress &

Company. His collection focused on Italian art, primarily from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, and included works by Giotto, Duccio, Sassetta, Fra Angelico, Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. The collection was considered to be “one of the most remarkable collections of

33 fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian art.” In 1939, Kress and his foundation donated 375

Italian paintings and 18 sculptures.

In 1942, Joseph Widener donated the Widener Collection that he and his father Peter

Widener had amassed. Peter Widener was a business man who made an enormous fortune in public transportation. He began collecting art in the 1880s and belonged to the generation who lavishly bought European high art. His home, Lynnewood Hall, was referred to as “the last of the American Versailles.” 34 Joseph Widener donated more than 600 works of art. The collection included not only European Old Masters and nineteenth-century paintings, but also a fine collection of decorative art and Chinese porcelains.

Another major donor was the banker, Chester Dale. Dale’s collection focused on nineteenth and twentieth-century European art such as Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the School of Paris. It also included many excellent works by Old Masters such as

Tintoretto, El Greco and Rubens, as well as American paintings by George Bellows, Mary

Cassatt, Benjamin West, and Guy Pène du Bois. Dale bequeathed his collection in 1962.

Lessing J. Rosenwald donated his comprehensive collection of prints and drawings.

Andrew Robinson, former senior curator of graphic arts, asserts that Rosenwald’s collection is

“the most extensive and finest single collection of graphic arts ever formed by one man in

13 America.” 35 Rosenwald continued to enhance the gift by purchasing new prints and upgrading the collection since his first donation of approximately 8,000 prints and drawings in 1943. The time of his death in 1979, he had gifted the museum a total of 22,000 prints and drawings.

Other important donations came from Georgia O’Keeffe, and William and Bernice

Chrysler Garbrisch. O’Keeffe donated about 1,500 photographs of Alfred Stieglitz in 1949. The

Garbrisches gifted 142 paintings from their collection of early American art in 1953.

The early generation of American collectors competitively amassed the products of

European high culture. Allan Wallach, an art historian and museum theorist, notes:

The great magnates of the Gilded Age purchased culture by the carload. Matthew Josephson has described unforgettably how the robber barons “ransacked the art treasures of Europe, stripped medieval castles of their carvings and tapestries, ripped whole staircases and ceilings from their place of repose through the centuries to lay them anew amid settings of a synthetic age and a simulated feudal grandeur.” Yet their acquisition of cultural property played across the divide between monopolization and hegemony, exclusivity and legitimation. As individuals, these men practiced conspicuous consumption, vying to outdo one another in the richness and value of their holdings; as members of a class, they cooperated in creating civic institutions over which they exercised exclusive control. Torn between building monuments to their personal fortunes and monuments to their civic-mindedness, they found themselves caught up in local politics and local society. 36

When Andrew Mellon purchased nearly two dozen masterpieces from the Hermitage

Museum, it was a big triumph as an art collector. By referring to his collection as “nation’s art,”

Mellon outdid many of his predecessors and contemporaries who were building their own

14 private monuments. Mellon admired European high culture. He was totally indifferent to

American art.

By comparison, William Wilson Corcoran and Duncan Phillips who founded their pri- vate museums earlier in Washington supported American artists. The Corcoran Gallery of Art opened in 1874 with a mission to promote national artists. Corcoran supported unknown

American artists by purchasing their works, providing exhibition spaces and paying exhibition expenses. 37 Duncan Philips, who opened his mansion to the public in 1921, collected works of

European Impressionists and American modern artists. 38 Philips viewed American modern

39 artists “as fully as equal to their European counterparts,” often displaying their work side by side. He had strong relationships with many of them as a patron and collector.

Mellon, however, showed no interest in his own nation’s artists. Ironically, he wanted to show that Washington had culture by creating America’s National Gallery of Art filled with

European masterpieces.

15 2. East Building

H i s t o r y

In his essay, “Reinventing the National Gallery”, the art historian Neil Harris argues that

“the East Building constituted a solution to problems generated by the cultural politics” of the time and it “responded directly to the ambitions of the National Gallery.” 40 The Gallery faced many problems in the early 1960s. The permanent collection of the National Gallery grew rapidly over the two decades since its opening in 1941. Pope’s original building secured its reputation as a premier collection of Old Masters. By the early 1960s, however, it became clear that the National Gallery had limitations in collecting scope as well as in other functional capacities. With the exception of the Chester Dale collection, which had a small portion of modern art, twentieth-century works were mostly absent. The Gallery’s meager library and modest publication program were also proving to be problematic in that they prevented the

Gallery from extending its role as a leading cultural institution. “The whole concept of a museum as an activity center was simply neither in Andrew Mellon’s mind nor in Pope’s mind,” 41 explained David Scott, the East Building’s planning coordinator.

Since its inception, the National Gallery has proclaimed itself as the leading cultural institution in Washington. In the mid-1960s, however, the Gallery felt “the danger of being outflanked.”42 The Smithsonian Institution was reinvigorated by the arrival of the dynamic new secretary S. Dillon Ripley in 1964. John Walker, the Gallery’s director, and Paul Mellon, its president, were threatened by “the agglomeration of many new units into the Smithsonian, with a Secretary who, unlike a lot of his predecessors, had a real interest in art.” 43 They

16 worried that he was “bent on subordinating the Gallery to Smithsonian control.” 44 Ripley begun to pursue the Hirshhorn Museum project within a few months of his arrival in

Washington. Joseph P. Hirshhorn was a well-known modern art collector and patron of

American artists such as Willem de Kooning, Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Edward

Hopper and Larry Rivers. Walker, at about the same time, had proposed to Hirshhorn to display

45 some of his sculpture collection in the National Gallery Garden. Hirshhorn, however, decided to donate his complete collection, over twelve thousand works, to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Hirshhorn and Sculpture Garden was established by an Act of Congress in 1966. In addition to this new project, Ripley planned to create an institute of advanced study. In 1966,

Meg Greenfield wrote inReporter , “It is Ripley, more than anyone else who embodies the desire to turn Washington into a sort of world center of arts and letters, albeit with the Smithsonian at the center of the center.” 46 Referring to the rivalry between the two institutions, she added,

“The Smithsonian and its most distinguished stepchild, the National Gallery, are hardly even on speaking terms anymore.” 47

Harris says that the administrators and trustees at the National Gallery realized that their museum’s role and function should be redefined in order to reclaim its once dominant role in Washington cultural life. The Gallery needed to take initiatives. In 1967, Paul Mellon and his sister Ailsa Mellon Bruce announced their initial gift of $20 million for the new building addition. After an extensive survey of art research centers, young and ambitious Carter Brown, then-assistant director, recommended the establishment of an advanced research center for art. He anticipated that this center would attract a community of scholars. In doing so, the new building could evolve into a major research center that would eventually enhance the Gallery’s

17 stature as a scholarly institution.48 The research center would serve the Gallery and its professional staffs as well. Carter Brown said that the new facility, with a library, photographic archives, and office spaces, would answer the need “to awaken Washington, ‘a sleeping prin- cess’ for art scholarship, from its lengthy slumber.” 49

In its early stage, the East Building was conceived as an activity center rather than an exhibition space. According to internal working documents written in 1968, Pope’s original building (fig. 3) would provide “a sense of place directly related to the uniqueness and irre- produceability of great works of art,” whereas the East Building (fig. 4) “would symbolize the activities of the Gallery, and its dissemination of information at every level.” 50

3. National Gallery West Building Interior view 4. National Gallery East Building Interior view from Phillip Kopper, America’s National Gallery of Art From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective: (New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991) The East Building, National Gallery of Art (New Heaven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

18 The influence of social activism in the 1960s also played a role in the Gallery’s evolution during this period. According to McClellan, socio-political atmosphere of the time led to fervid debates on the role of the art museum in society. The traditional approach was to see the value of the art museum as a place of refugee from the outside world. Its main function was to provide a soothing environment for “nonpolitical aesthetic contemplation.” 51

George Hamilton, director of the Clark Art Institute, made the argument that museums were

“’most psychologically useful’ to society by being irrelevant to the world outside. It was

precisely in art’s removal from daily life and the ‘effacement’ of its social meaning that its ‘life-

52 enhancing difference’ could be felt.” On the other hand, McClellan notes, “the proclaimed autonomy of art and disengaged stance of art museums struck social activists and avant- garde artists as unacceptable establishment complacency and elitism.” 53 Thomas Hoving, the radical young director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, urged his colleagues to

“get involved and become far more relevant,” and to “re-examine what we are, continually ask ourselves how we can make ourselves indispensible and relevant.” 54

These two opposing views on the role of the art museum were reflected in the dif- ferent approaches taken by the directors of the National Gallery. John Walker, the Gallery’s second director, took the very conservative and elitist perspective. He wrote in his memoir:

I am indifferent to their function in community relations, in solving racial problems, in pro- paganda for any cause. My beliefs were later reinforced when, after I graduated from Har- vard, the faculty of the Department of Fine Arts sent me to Florence to work with Bernard Berenson, the great critic of Italian painting. The most passionate viewer of works of art I have ever known, he felt that museums existed primarily for the satisfaction of people

19 like himself. I adopted the same philosophy: I was, and I still am, an elitist, knowing full well that this is now an unfashionable attitude. . . . I have been unchanging in my passionately held opinion that the success or failure of a museum is not to be measured by attendance 55 but by the beauty of its collection and the harmony of their display.

The third director Carter Brown, however, defined the Gallery’s mission in an opposite way. He spoke about the design of the East Building “as mechanism to expose art to maximum number.” 56 Carter Brown became the director in 1969 at age 34, and was the center figure of the creation of the East Building. He was a keen observer and belonged to the same generation as Thomas Hoving at the Metropolitan Museum. Carter Brown’s rivalry with him, Harris says, stimulated a high level of planning interest during the 1970s. 57

In the midst of radical social activism, a younger generation of museum critics called for a new museum model that was “people-centered and action-oriented.” 58 Under Carter

Brown’s lead, the East Building followed this direction.

20 Architecture

Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce donated a total of $95 million for the construction of the East Building. It was Paul Mellon who ultimately selected I.M. Pei as the architect. The adjacent 8.8 acre parcel designated for the site had been secured by Andrew

Mellon for expansion when he built the West Building in 1937. According to Philip Jodidio, author of I.M. Pei’s monograph, Pei’s design grew directly from the triangular shape of the site

(fig. 5). “The solution”, he writes, “came early on a flight home from Washington when he drew a diagonal to connect two points on a site diagram, creating a large isosceles triangle (the museum) and a smaller right triangle (the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts). . . The site’s triangular geometry became the leitmotif of the entire design.” 59

5. I. M. Pei’s conceptual sketch for the East Building From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective

21 The East Building consists of two triangular volumes: the museum and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. The study center occupies a smaller footprint but has twice as many floors. Administrative and curatorial offices surround the soaring 72-foot-high library reading room. At the center of the museum, Pei carved out third triangular volume: a

16,000-square-foot atrium. This atrium connects the museum and the study center. Exhibition areas are tucked into the corners of the museum in three diamond-shaped towers.60

As Harris says, the atrium is the modern counterpart of the West Building rotunda.

Its main function is, similarly, to entice and impress the public. For most visitors, the atrium defines the experience of the East Building. Harris says that “the goal was not a hushed, highly structured, or tightly disciplined visitorship, but active, animated, even congested gathering of people. The atrium promised to have its greatest impact when the space was the most crowded.” 61 Carter Brown wanted the new building to have a “welcomingly

62 democratic overtone.” Both Carter Brown and Pei wanted to attract families and young people who they felt were crucial to the Gallery’s future success.

The East Building has been popular among the public. The reaction, however, from the architecture critics have been varied. While Ada Louise, an ardent modernist critic, praised the East Building as “a genuine contemporary classic” and was impressed by “dazzling” effect of light in the atrium,63 other critics, such as Martin Filler, called the atrium “the poshest of suburban shopping malls.” 64 Another critic, Richard Henessey, detested the building because of its “shocking fun-house atmosphere” and “deeply philistine unseriousness.” 65 Even though the East Building succeeded to attract the general public,

22 as many critics pointed out, it was not a successful museum design. Exhibition spaces are too small compared to the relative size of the atrium. A critic from Arts Guardian in London summarized much of the commentary when he wrote that the East Building “has been hailed as ‘a soaring symphony of light and marble,’ which it is, but it is also disaster as a museum building. All the paintings are shunned off into tiny hexagon rooms into three towers. The rush-hour atmosphere in these rooms keeps most people where apparently it was intended they should be: in the Central Court.” 66

In the radical air of the late 1960s, there was a strong call for a ‘people-centered and action oriented’ museum. Since then, support for public access and community outreach have become as important as collecting and preserving art objects in many museums. It seems, however, almost impossible to reconcile the different needs and expectations of museum visitors. McClellan notes, “public museums have always been a space of social encounter in which the needs of the uneducated and the elite, the art lover and the shallow tourist, democracy and diplomacy, are in play and potential conflict.”67 It is not easy simultaneously

“to excite the wonder of the crowds” and to satisfy “the sensibility of the few.” 68 In the museum of the East Building, Carter Brown and Pei chose the first.

23 C o l l e c t i o n

The East Building houses the Gallery’s modern and contemporary collections. The galleries at the upper level exhibit modern art before World War II. They include works of

Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Constantin

Brancusi, René Magritte and Joseph Cornell. Galleries at the concourse level feature art works after World War II. Works by Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnet Newman, Andy Warhol, Roy

Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt are shown here. While European modern masters work dominate upper galleries, American art leads at the concourse level and the atrium.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the major modern art movements --

Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Suprematism, Dada, Surrealism -- developed in Europe.

American artists were generally viewed as provincial compared to their European counter- part. By contrast, following World War II, a succession of American art movements such as

Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Minimalism, Antiform, and Conceptual Art took center stage in the international art world. New York replaced Paris which had been the

69 undisputable center of art world since the eighteenth century.

Art collecting patterns in America dramatically changed following World War II.

According to Stavitsky, while the early generation of collectors, mostly East Coast businessmen, focused on European Old Masters, the new generation of art patrons who expanded during the prosperous post-war years, began to show strong interest in contemporary American art. 70

24 One of the most important collections of contemporary art at the Gallery came from

Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Unlike the Gallery’s other major donors, the Vogels are ordinary, middle-class Americans: Dorothy was a librarian, and Herbert was a postal clerk. From the early 1960s, they began to collect a number of then-unknown artists. They built strong relationships with such Minimalism and Conceptual artists as Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Carl

Andre, Eva Hesse, Robert Ryman, Richard Tuttle and Joseph Kosuth, and over the years, were able to amass a remarkable collection. 71 In 1992, they donated more than 2,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures to the National Gallery.

When Andrew Mellon created the West Building, he prohibited the acquisition of works by living artists. He did not anticipate that his own country’s artists would soon lead the international art world. Within a decade, however, there would be a radical change in the art world. In New York in the mid-1940s, a new generation of American artists emerged and began to develop their own unique style. In 1948, Barnet Newman declared:

Here in America, some of us, free from the weight of European culture, are finding the answer, by completely denying that art has any concern with the problem of beauty and where to find it. . . . We are freeing ourselves of the impediment of memory, as- sociation, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what you have, that have been the devices of Western European painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man or ‘life’, we are making [them] out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history. 72

25 The younger generation of American artists felt a strong desire to free themselves from European art traditions. They expanded the traditional concept of art by exploring new subjects, new forms and new media.

When visitors enter the atrium of the East Building, they are greeted by several enormous American works: Alexander Calder’s mobile Untitled, Robert Motherwell’s painting Reconciliation Elegy, Ellsworth Kelly’s sixteen canvases Color Panels for a Large Wall,

Roy Lichtenstein’s Bedroom at Arles and David Smith’s colorful sculpture Circle series. These works embody the power and confidence of American art.

26 II. Typology study

T h e M o d e r n , The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Modern is a high-end dining restaurant located in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was designed by architects Bentel & Bentel in 2005, and is operated by the

Union Square Hospitality Group. The location of The Modern connects three buildings: Philip

L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone’s 1939 original building, Philip Johnson’s 1964 museum annex and Sculpture Garden and Yoshio Taniguchi’s new 2004 addition. It is accessible from within the building and has a separate street level entrance on West 53rd street as well.

According to Bentel & Bentel, the concept of the restaurant is to mediate “between the museum and the city,” just as Taniguchi’s new design mediates “between the experience of the city and that of the art it displays.” 73 In addition, they responded to the museum’s concept of heterotopias -- a place of many places -- by “manipulating the scale of the spaces it [the restaurant] occupies and intensifying the presence of the materials that define it.”74

Contained within its 14,400-square-foot space are four separate programs: an 18-seat bar, a 110-seat casual dining area (Bar Room), a 112-seat formal dining area (The Modern), and a private dining area. The long entrance hall borders a 56-feet-long bronze and glass wine wall, which serves as a backdrop to the bar on the other side. Parallel to the bar is first casual dining room (fig. 6) and then formal dining room (fig. 7) at the window wall.

According to the architects, the curve of entrance hall and the 46-feet-long marble bar refer

75 to the original building’s canopy. They used different materials for different programs. Black

27 terrazzo is used for the bar flooring, white oak (identical to what Taniguchi specified for the galleries) for the casual dining flooring, and dark carpet for the formal dining room flooring.

6. The Modern, New York. 7. The Modern, New York. The Bar Room The formal dining room

In the Bar Room, black and red leather chairs, a very long black leather bench, and intimate tables create a casual and vibrant atmosphere. At the ceiling, ventilation grills are hidden above stretched sheets of PVC. The Bar Room serves small plates of Alsatian cuisine.

Reservations are not required.

A translucent glass wall separates the Bar Room from the formal dining room. A dramatic change of ceiling height, different flooring material and sweeping view of the adjacent Sculpture Garden signal a different program. The Modern offers a multi-course prix- fixe menu of French cuisine.

The furniture and tableware are a mix of predominantly Danish design and the

Bentels’ custom design. Some of the designs are reproductions of pieces in the museum’s own collection. As the Bentels hoped, they succeeded in creating a “spare yet warm” 76 dining space in this iconic museum.

28 Restaurant Georges , The Pompidou Center, Paris

The Pompidou Center is a multipurpose cultural institution. Since its opening in 1977, it remains one of the most popular sites in Paris. Embracing high and popular culture, it houses not only an excellent collection of modern and contemporary art, but also features a multimedia library, a performing arts space and a cinema. As McClellan says, “the

Pompidou was a new type of institution packaged in a radically new architectural envelope.” 77

The bold and dynamic building (fig. 8), designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers,

78 symbolizes “a progressive and open society.” In the spirit of the 1960s, Piano and Rogers

79 proposed a “constraint-free architecture.” They located the building’s movement and flowing systems on the exterior to free up the interior space. On the west façade, color-coded ducts wrap the structure. Through the transparent main façade, people can see the activities

80 inside the museum from the piazza.

9. The Restaurant Georges 8. The Pompidou Center, Paris photo from www. jacobmacfarlane.com

29 The Restaurant Georges (fig. 9) is located on the sixth floor. It includes a 9700-square- foot indoor space and a 4850-sqare-foot terrace. It was designed by Jacob + Macfarlane d’Architecture and opened in 2000. Their primary concern was to create an appropriate response inside such an iconic architectural context.81

We became interested in the notion of trying to create an architecture that was made in a way from what existed. Not wanting to import or create by addition, but propose the lightest possible intervention. Our interest was to discover or insert a kind of non- existent or background presence, maybe at the extreme, an almost non-architectural 82 or non designed response.

Their desire to create background presence led to them to insert a series of amorphous volumes. The exterior of these volumes is made of aluminum. The aluminum surface is brushed to reflect and absorb light. As a result, it emphasizes the concept of

83 background: “appearance and disappearance.”

Though the architects describe the volumes as “minimal presence, with a strong

84 personality,” in reality, they dominate the space. They define the experience of the restaurant.

These volumes contain various programs: kitchen, bar, coat check and private recep- tion room. Under the aluminum skin, interior volumes are covered with bright colored rubber.

Each color refers to different program. The architects made the skin stretchable so that it can

85 adapt to programmatic changes. Contrast to playful and amorphous volumes, the furniture is rigid geometric shape and all in white.

30 By experimenting with new forms and materials, architects Jacob and MacFarlane created an appropriate response inside the dynamic building which supports all kinds of creative human activities.

Café Sabarsky and Café Fledemaus , Neue Galerie, New York

The Neue Galerie (fig. 10) opened in 2001 on New York’s prestigious Museum mile, just a few blocks north of the Metropolitan Museum. Its collection focuses on early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. In a Beaux-Arts mansion that industrialist William Starr Miller originally commissioned and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III later bought, exhibition galleries are located on the second and third floors.

As a new museum, the Neue Galerie needed to establish a unique identity. Margot A.

Wallace, an expert on museum branding, says, “A brand new museum needs a brand. It needs an identity that instantly communicates what it is, has, and does…. A brand new museum needs an image, which is how others perceive its identity and which helps in creating a

86 reputation.” The Neue Galerie provides an excellent example of how an art museum can use its dining facilities as means of branding its identity. According to the museum, “Café Sabarsky draws its inspiration from the great Viennese cafés that served as important centers of

87 intellectual and artistic life at the turn of the century.” The Café Sabarsky’s (fig. 11) interior design recreates that period style with lighting fixtures by Josef Hoffmann, furniture by Adolf

Loos, and banquettes that are upholstered with a 1912 Otto Wagner fabric. This intimate 60- seat café is also used to host all cabaret, chamber, and classical music performances. 88

31 10. The Neue Galerie, New York, photo from www.neuegalerie.org.

11. Café Sabarsky, photo from www.neuegalerie.org. 12. Café Fledermaus , photo from www.neuegalerie.org.

The design of Café Fledermaus (fig. 12) is “inspired by the cabaret Fledermaus, commissioned by Fritz Waerndorfer and executed by the artisans of the Wiener Werkstätte in

89 1907.” Café Fledermaus has tables and chairs designed by Josef Hoffman. Both cafés offer a menu that focuses on authentic Viennese cuisine.

These cafés are very popular, probably more popular than the museum itself. Here, people feel transported to turn-of-the-century Vienna. The ambience is intimate and modest, the menu is simple and rustic. The Neue Galerie is located in one of the poshest mansions built by an American industrialist. By creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere of a Viennese café of that era, the Neue Galerie successfully established itself as a small

European intellectual and artistic center within an American metropolis.

32 III. Site Analysis and Design Scope

1.West Building: Café Repose

The existing Garden Café (fig. 13) is located at the center of the ground floor. It is close to the Constitution Avenue entry and is sandwiched between the exhibition galleries and retail shops. While this location has the benefit of being highly accessible to the public, it suffers from porous boundaries that are overly exposed to foot traffic. Tables and chairs are arranged in such as way that visitors must walk around them to get from an exhibition gallery to retail shop (and vice versa). The result is the rushed atmosphere of a food court.

At the southern end of the existing café are additional usable spaces: spaces currently being used for storage and unfinished area. The new café footprint is relocated to this area, in so doing, it allows for a quieter, more enclosed dining space and clears up obstructed traffic pattern.

The existing café is approximately 3,100 sf (excluding the prep kitchen). The proposed café will occupy 4,000 sf (also excluding the full kitchen) and includes a 48-seat dining room, a

32-seat tea room, a 36-seat wine bar, and adjacent restrooms.

13. Garden Café Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Archives

33 Kitchen Program The existing café has only a small prep kitchen. The proposed café will have a 1,000 sf of fully functional kitchen. Required kitchen programs are as followed. a. Bulk Dry Storage Area used for storage of dry goods, paper products and related non-perishables. Basic shelving and dunnage racks are required. b. Bulk Cold Storage Walk-in refrigerator and freezer for fresh and frozen food. To be located adjacent to pre-preparation area. Fixed shelving, dunnage racks and movable racks are required. c. Pre-Preparation Work counters and tables with sinks for washing, trimming, cutting, mixing, slicing, and other preparation process before cooking. Salads and other noncooked items are prepared here. Processing equipment such as mixers, choppers, and slicers are needed. d. Final Preparation Work surface for food assembly and garnish, along with smaller scaled refrigerator and freezer located here. Heat equipment such as oven, steamers, charbroilers, ranges and kitchen ventilation systems are required. e. Service Area Display counter and dispensing equipment (ice, beverage, condiment) are required. Located between final-prep and dining area. f. Dish Washing Tables for clean and dirty dishes, sinks, dishwashing machine, hot water booster heater, pot sink, dish, plate storage carts, garbage receptacles and hand sink are located here. Area adjacent to dining and service area.

34 2 . E a s t B u i l d i n g : B o o k C a f é

The new Book Café is located in the 1,600 sf space that was formerly the Terrace Café

(fig. 14), on the fourth floor of the East Building, overlooking the atrium below. The Terrace

Café closed in the 1990s and reopened intermittently for special occasions in subsequent years. Recently, the café has closed entirely. The museum’s plan is to use this space for office and administrative uses until 2012. This project proposes to bring back its original function as a café.

The site’s principal advantages are its sweeping views of the Mall and the grand atrium below. The principal challenge, which is addressed in the design chapter, is its lack of visibility from below. Few visitors are aware of the café, and thus fail to patronize the facility.

The new Book Café offers a variety of coffee, and tea based drinks, and baked goods.

It features an espresso station, a series of book stacks, three 12-seat tables, and a 25-seat bar.

The espresso station includes an espresso counter, brewing and dispensing equipment, product storage unit, menu signage, and merchandizing shelving.

14. Terrace Café Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Archives

35 IV. Design Development

1.West Building: Café Repose

What is the fundamental purpose of the art museum? There has been fervent debate about its aesthetic idealism and social utilitarianism among museum professionals. James

Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, said, “In a world of rising tensions and

91 uncertainty, art museums offer places of refuge and spiritual and cultural nourishment.”

Traditionally, the art museum has been viewed as a sanctuary removed from the outside world.

This concept has been attacked by museum theorists as an “elitist paradigm” 92 that fails to address the needs of contemporary culture. When former Metropolitan Museum director

Thomas Hoving organized the exhibition “Harlem on My Mind” at the Metropolitan Museum

93 in 1969, he wanted to expand the concept of what exhibitions in art museum should do. The reactions, however, were not positive. Art critic Katherine Kuh, in an essay “What’s an Art

94 Museum For?” lamented, “The exhibition shows us the pain, but where are the fantasies?”

In the same year as this controversial exhibition, a survey commissioned by the International

Council of Museums, showed “a museum-going public hostile to the overlap of art and

95 everyday issues.” Hoving’s “Harlem on My Mind” provoked backlash among his opponents.

Philippe de Montebello, who became the director at the Metropolitan Museum after Hoving, held the opposing view.

I know it has become popular to suggest that museums should not be removed from everyday experience, indeed that they should blend in as much as possible ... I view our role quite differently; in fact, as the very opposite. In our largely prosaic and materialistic world,

36 where the factitious holds sway, it is the mystery, the wonder of art, that is our singular distinction and that our visitor seeks. So, it is precisely by distancing the visitor from what Sartre called ‘the monotonous disorder of daily life’ that we best serve that visitor. 96

As social turmoil and political tensions have increased in recent decades, Montebello’s view seems more persuasive than ever. In fact, immediately following September 11, 2001, people flocked to museums to search for something with transcendent value. When the

Metropolitan Museum reopened two days after the attack on the World Trade Center, eight thousand people walked through its doors, setting an attendance record for a day without a blockbuster exhibition. Asked to account for the surge in attendance, one visitor explained

“art is very important … to my healing process … [it is] a calm center in the midst of this

97 chaos and real uncertainty and fear … there’s peace in it.” Others said that the museum was an “escape from everything that’s been going on, where things are permanent, stable, no matter what’s going on in the outside world.” 98

The main function of the West Building is to provide a serene space for aesthetic contemplation. It offers respite from the tensions and pressures of hectic urban life. The new

Café Repose in this building is intended to perform the same function as a shelter removed from the outside world.

37 John Singer Sargent and Repose

John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) painting, Repose (1911), was selected as the design inspiration for the new café for two reasons: first, Sargent’s own identity as one of the most

Europeanized American artist of his time resembles that of the West Building; second, the setting of the painting as an elegant sanctuary mirrors that of the West Building.

Richard Ormond, author of Sargent’s monograph, summarized Sargent as “European in his tastes and upbringing, American in his habits of thought and moral code.” 99 Sargent was born in Florence in 1856 to American parents. His parents “belonged to that American expatriate generation obsessed with Europe and things European, who sacrificed comfort and security for the culture.” 100 Throughout his life, Sargent was exposed to European art and culture. He spoke four languages. He trained in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and also studied with the fashionable portrait painter Emile Carlous-Duran. He also admired the works of Impressionist painters who were considered part of the avant-garde at that time. Their influences were evident in his earlier work. At the same time, however, he always respected the achievements of conservative academic painters. Carlous-Duran taught his pupils to appreciate the relative values of light and dark to capture the essence of objects and people.

Sargent learned to portray objects faithfully under varying light conditions and atmospheres.

Under Carlous-Duran, Sargent mastered exceptional technical facility. He could express the textures of objects in a few strokes. This gave his work a “sense of immediacy denied to more cautious painters.” 101

38 Sargent rose to become one of the leading portrait painters in England and America.

His exceptional talent to portray people in elegant and luxurious settings made him very popular among rich and powerful patrons. His close friendship with writer Henry James and architects Charles McKim and Standford White led to a spate of commissions from wealthy

American clients. His portraits decorated the walls of the elegant and luxurious mansions that

McKim, Mead and White designed. Ormond noted that although Sargent was American, “to smart New York society he represented the acme of the fashionable Europeanism to which they aspired. The taut, nervous elegance of his portraits, their subtle lighting and air of mysteriousness, their artfully arranged accessories, and the panache with which they were painted appealed to an audience in search of high style.” 102 His clientele included notable figures such as Commodore Vanderbilt, architect Richard Morris Hunt, garden designer

Frederick Law Olmstead, banker Henry Marquand, Senator Calvin Bruce and diplomat Joseph

103 Chaote and collector Sarah Sears. Peter Widener, a major donor of the West Building collection, also commissioned Sargent to paint his portrait.

Ormond argues that Sargent breathed new life into the traditional portraiture genre.

Like his great predecessors, he made his sitter look nobler, more beautiful, more assured than they were in reality. That is the sine qua non of all portraiture. What Sargent brought to the tradition that was new and different was his ability to infuse into his portraits a sense of immediate and the actual, as if what we see before us is life unfolding as it really is. Like a conjuror he practiced sleights of hand, arbitrary croppings, odd angles and abrupt foreshortenings, to intensify the illusion of reality. His acute powers of observation and bravura style enabled him to capture people on canvas with remarkable freshness and force. Above of all it was his mastery of technique in rendering light that gives his portraits their expressive realism. 104

39 15. John Singer Sargent, Repose (1911), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

In 1907, in spite of his great success as a portrait painter, Sargent decided to abandon

conventional portrait in order to explore other fields such as landscapes and subject paintings. 105 Repose (fig. 15) is by no means a conventional portrait. The subject in this painting is Sargent’s niece and favorite model Rose-Marie Ormond Michel (1893-1918). The

National Gallery explains:

[Sargent] depicted Rose-Marie as a languid, anonymous figure absorbed in poetic reverie. The reclining woman, casually posed in an atmosphere of elegiac calm and consummate luxury, seems the epitome of nonchalance - the painting’s original title. Sargent seems to have been documenting the end of era, for the lingering aura of fin- de-siècle gentility and elegant indulgence conveyed in Repose would soon be shattered 106 by massive political and social upheaval in the early twentieth century.

For the design of the Café Repose, Sargent’s painting is deconstructed into three unique parts, with each part representing its own program: the painting’s room is translated into the café’s dining area; the gilded picture frame along the top of the painting relates to the café’s tea room; and the female subject relates to the café’s wine bar.

40 C a f é R e p o s e

Room (dining room)

16. Café Repose, dining room.

This space is inspired by the feminine and gracious room depicted in the painting. It is designed to capture the elegant and melancholy atmosphere of a vanished era. Eight original marble-clad columns allow this space to be subdivided into four small compartments. Each compartment has an ambience of a private room. Heavy dark brown velvet curtains demarcate each dining room. Two large gilt bronze chandeliers along the central axis, faded blue tufted banquettes along two perimeters and hand-brushed brass seating give this area a feeling of old world elegance. The natural brass chair backs would be hand brushed and untreated to allow for oxidation. This will lend a natural patina to the material as time goes by.

41 The wall finish is gray fresco on plaster. Many galleries in the West Building have original plaster walls. Fresco is a difficult technique. Without proper preparation, some pigments van- ish into the wall. This unpredictable and somewhat mottled effect is intentional. Some pig- ment leaves vivid traces on the wall, some pigment leaves a little, and some pigment perishes completely. It is like our life, our history. This wall will reflect the ruins of a time that no longer exists, and evoke feelings of nostalgia. The flooring in the dining room is wide-plank oak simi- lar to flooring throughout much of the building. The flooring along the center axis is original green marble to match the flooring in the rotunda above. Similarly, the marble is mirror-fin- ished to reflect the two gilt chandeliers above. The color scheme here is subtle blues, greens, grays, golds and dark browns as in Sargent’s painting.

Picture ( Tea room )

This room’s design is inspired by the dark brown picture with gilt frame along the top of the painting. Even though the picture is cut off at the edge of the painting, its immense scale dominates the upper part of painting and creates a strong horizontal axis. Sargent typically incorporated a very dark brown background in his conventional portraits and favored decorative eighteenth-century style gilt frames.

The National Gallery’s founder Andrew Mellon was an Anglophile. He collected British portraits. In England, portraiture had traditionally been regarded as a prestigious art genre.

42 In 1886, Sargent left Paris and moved to London where he could take advantage of the live- lier portrait market. In Paris, Sargent was “regarded as French by artistic temperament and training.” 107 In England, “the ‘Frenchness’ of his style -- its technical dexterity, taut, contrived design and nervous facture” were viewed “chic and clever.” 108 He set to work recording the rich and powerful people there. His portraits hung in the drawing rooms of the great houses in England, along side works by Van Dyke, Kneller, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney and

Lawrence.

17. Café Repose, Tea room.

43 The tea room serves as an additional dining room for lunch and dinner, and in between, as an afternoon tea room. Afternoon tea, served between four and four thirty, is an elegant upper-class English tradition that features tiny finger sandwiches, dainty cakes and pots of tea. The program and interior design of this tea room reflects the Gallery’s founder’s affection for English high culture.

The wall finish is dark brown wood panels. Flooring is wide-plank oak, stained dark brown, as in the dining room. Mirrors with gilt bronze framing hang throughout, allowing people to see their reflections while dining. Here, diners become the living subjects of their own portraits. Under the subtle ambient lighting, people would “look nobler, more beautiful, more assured than they are in reality” as in the traditional portraits which are displayed in the upper galleries.

R e v e r i e (Wine Bar )

This bar is inspired by the young woman who lies dreaming at the center of the

painting. Rose-Marie Ormond Michel was the most elegant model in Sargent’s works. She was the daughter of Sargent’s younger sister. She married the French art historian Robert

André-Michel in 1913. Both were killed during World War I. He died on the western front in

1914, and she died in St. Gervais church in Paris, during a German shelling in 1918. Even though Rose-Marie would perish soon in tragedy, her beauty is captured vividly in this

painting. This space is designed to express her elegant and sensual beauty, and convey the evanescence and mystery of dream.

44 18. Café Repose, Bar.

In the painting Repose, the flowing movement of her dress contrasts with the straight horizontal lines created by the picture frame, table and settee. Unlike the dining room which has a strictly geometrical floor plan and symmetrical arrangement, the bar has a free form plan. A series of undulating glass walls wrap the bar area like the heavily draped blue-green silk fabric wraps Rose-Marie’s body in the painting. These undulating glass walls, which simultaneously conceal and reveal the bar, reflect light and images in an ambiguous way, creating, in turn, a mysterious atmosphere. An ellipse shaped bar and curved seating behind enhance the feminine and gracious ambience. The undulating glass walls and the bar are lit from below to make them appear floating. The evanescent quality of the lighting produces an overall effect that is reminiscent of the fleeting moment of a dream.

In Sargent’s alluring painting, the room encloses the woman and lets her indulge into her dream. Likewise, Café Repose provides a serene space far removed from the real world, allowing people to relax into their own poetic reveries for a while.

45 2. East Building: Book Café

When Carter Brown proposed the plan for the East Building, he had two, seemingly contradictory, ambitions: first, to enhance the stature of the Gallery as a scholarly institution by establishing the advanced research center; second, to transform the Gallery into a ‘people- oriented and action-centered’ museum. ‘Dissemination of information at every level’ and to

‘expose art to maximum number’ were the key benchmarks for the East Building. The East

Building’s two main volumes were intended to perform these two different functions.

The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts occupies almost a third of the entire

East Building, yet serves a highly limited audience. This huge space caters to a narrow cross- section of scholars, connoisseurs, curators, and other museum professionals. Since its beautiful art research library (fig. 19) is only open to “the Gallery's staff, visiting scholars, and qualified researchers,”111 few people are even aware of the existence of this great resource in the building. By comparison, the library at the George Pompidou Center in Paris is fully accessible and open to the public. The Pompidou Center was planned and built during the same period as the East Building. The Pompidou Center was one of the products of the social activism behind Paris riots of 1968. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in his influential book

The Love of Art (1966), proclaimed that “the aesthetic taste and judgment were the product of class and education.” 112 Supported by Bourdieu’s research, social activists behind the Paris

113 riots called for “a greater democratization of culture.” A year later, President Pompidou announced the plan for the new multicultural center which would symbolize the open and

114 progressive society they envisioned for themselves. The core mission of the Pompidou

46 Center is “to spread knowledge about all creative works from the 20th century and those

115 heralding the new millennium.” The Center has a public reference library with facilities for over 2,000 readers. It is open to everyone. Appointments are not required. It brims with the energy and enthusiasm of people who are interested in art.

Compared to this, the art research library at

the East Building is virtually lifeless. It is always empty.

It is a beautiful warehouse for books reserved for few

scholars. Instead, the planners of the East Building

reserved the atrium for the general public. It is

designed to entice, impress and excite them. The

demarcation between these two spaces is stark.

19. National Gallery East Building Library From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective

The new Book Café in the East Building is designed to connect these two spaces both physically and conceptually. The site is located on the outer edge of the research center’s triangle. The Book Café is designed to support and be more fully aligned with the East

Building’s own mission: disseminate knowledge about art.

The program of the Book Café is similar to the commercial cafés in bookstores such as Starbucks embedded within Barnes & Noble Books. Here, people can drink coffee, read, converse and buy books. A specialized collection of contemporary art and design books and magazines will be available for purchase. The Book Café seeks to attract locals who are

interested in art as well as serve museum visitors. This café will help educate the public about

47 modern and contemporary art. By having a café like this, the National Gallery can demonstrate its commitment to serving the public and enhance its image as a scholarly institution to a broader audience.

Minimalism Art

Minimalism art serves as the project’s design inspiration for two reasons: first, it emerged during the 1960s, concurrent with the design of the East Building, and bears a strong visual resemblance to the building; second, it was a purely American art movement.

James Meyer, one of the leading authorities on Minimalism art, summarizes the movement as follows:

Although never exactly defined, the term ‘Minimalism’ denotes an avant-garde style that emerged in New York and Los Angeles during the 1960s, most often associated with the work of Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Robert Morris, and other artists briefly associated with the tendency. Primarily sculpture, Minimal art tends to consist of single or repeated geometric forms. Industrially produced or built by skilled workers following the artist’s instructions, it removes any trace of emotion or intuitive decision-making, in stark contrast to the Abstract Expressionist painting and sculpture that preceded it during the 1940s and 1950s. Minimal work does not allude to anything beyond its literal presence, or its existence in the physical world. Materials appear as materials; colour (if used at all) is non-referential. Often placed in walls, in corners, or directly on the floor, it is an installational art that reveals the galley as an actual space, rendering the viewer conscious of moving through this space. 116

Two seminal theorists of Minimalism were Robert Morris and Donald Judd. In his influential essay, “Specific Object” (1965), Judd declared:

48 It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. 117 The main things are alone and are more intense, clear and powerful.

Morris expressed a similar idea one year later in his essay, “Note on Sculpture.”

Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience. Unitary forms do not reduce relationships. They order them. If the predominant, hieratic nature of the unitary form functions as a constant, all those particularizing relations of scale, proportion, etc., are not thereby cancelled. Rather they are bound more cohesively and indivisibly together. 118

When Minimalism art first appeared, however, it puzzled the public and art critics alike.

Its striking resemblance to ordinary objects and lack of handmade expression made viewers suspicious about the Minimalism artists’ intentions. The famous modernist critic,

Clement Greenberg, viewed it as “a Dadaist activity whose sole concern is to shock.” 119 Like

Dada, he thought, Minimalism art exists on the blurring border of art and non-art. Greenberg argued that it was “closer to furniture than to art, it is kind of good design, but nothing more.” 120

In spite of such negative views, Minimalism art captured international attention during the late 1960s and mid 1970s. Eugene Goosen, curator of the exhibition “The Art of

Real: USA 1948-1968,” which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968 and toured to

Paris, Zurich and London, argued that Minimalism was “an exclusively American artistic phenomenon” 121 and Minimalism artists expressed an “American impulse to confront the

122 experiences and objects we encounter everyday.”

49 Kirk Varnedoe, art historian and former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, expressed a similar idea in his lectures at the National Gallery. Minimalism art, he said, was in its philosophical grounding, and in its empiricism, purely American.

This art has nothing to do with angst or metaphysics or psychology. It had no hidden cards; everything was on the surface. It was a new, echt American art: brash, hard-nosed, and empirical. It was all about the immediacy of sensory appreciation, about things that were real, that were hard, that you could test out by kicking them. 123

Judd insisted that his art was disconnected from European tradition. The main difference between his work and traditional abstraction, he said, was that his work was not

124 “rational.” According to Varnedoe, rationality belongs to a European philosophical tradition. He suggests that the “literal sensibility” of Minimalism artists such as Judd and

Andre were related to American pragmatism. William James, a proponent of American pragmatism, noted:

Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from facts. Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstraction. . . The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness . . . Your typical ultra-abstractionist fairly shudders at concreteness: other things equal, he positively prefers the pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much purer, cleaner, and nobler. 125

Art critic Barbara Rose also maintained that Minimalism artists such as Judd and Andre

126 were involved in an “empirical, pragmatic, American insistence on concreteness and fact.”

She said that “Judd’s famous statements about getting rid of European thought and getting

50 away from the European model have to do with his aversion to the rational and his preference for the pragmatic, literal, and concrete.” 127

There is a strong visual resemblance between some Minimalism sculpture and Pei’s

East Building. Art historian Anthony Alofsin points out the aesthetic affinity between Morris’s

Untitled (1967)(fig. 20) and the building. According to him, both works are based on “pure geometrical abstraction and on the powerful visual and physical presence of simple,

128 immutable masses.” He also notes that Donald Judd’s Untitled Object (conceived 1963, built

1969) (fig. 21) connected with Pei’s design concept for the Gallery in “explorations of the

129 extruded triangle and resulting diagonals.” Alofsin admits, however, that the relationship between art and architecture is not simple: the interaction is complex and not necessarily reciprocal. Judd detested the East Building. In 1981, he said that the East Building was an example of “degradation in the visual arts,” a building modeled on a “hotel, a grand lobby, surrounded by boutiques.” 130

20. Robert Morris, Untitled, (1967). 21. Donald Judd, Untitled Object, (1969), National Gallery of Art, From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective Washington, D.C.

51 Book Café

The design of the Book Café is inspired by both the aesthetics and theories of the

Minimalism art. Repeated geometric forms and industrial materials are key design elements here. The biggest challenge of this café is its present location, nestled back onto the fourth floor. It is not visible from the atrium. In addition to this, its design should be harmonized with other works displayed in the atrium. Combining the function and aesthetic elements provides a solution to both issues. As its name suggests, the new Book Café needs plenty of book stacks. Simple geometric shaped book stacks are inspired by Minimalism sculpture. By displaying a collection of ten black steel book stacks at the terrace perimeter, they will have a powerful visual impact from the atrium below. They will look like a series of Minimalism boxes. These book stacks blur the distinction between art and non-art just as Minimalism sculpture does. They will draw curious viewers to this café.

Visitors entering the Book Café are greeted by three fifteen-feet- long reading tables, an eighty-feet-long bar and ten eight-feet-high book stacks. Minimalism artists refused to use the pedestal which isolated the sculpture from the real space around it. By putting the work directly on the floor, they want it to engage with its surrounding. Morris emphasized the relationship between the viewer and sculpture. Placed in the center of the gallery, it requires the viewer’s active participation.

52 The better new work takes relationship out of the work and makes them a function of space, light and the viewer’s field of vision… One is more aware than ever before that he himself establishing relationships as he apprehends the object from various positions and under varying conditions of light and special context. 131

In his famous essay “Art and Objecthood” (1967), Modernist art critic Michael Fried pointed out a theatrical relationship between the viewer and Minimalism sculpture. He

132 insisted that Minimalism work “depends on the beholder, is incomplete without him.”

Once the viewer enters the room where a Minimalism work is placed, it “refuses to stop

133 confronting him, distancing him, isolating him.” Fried, however, did not value the activation of the space around the sculpture. Meyer explains:

For Fried, the revelation of objecthood, of literalness for its own sake, has undermined the distinction between art and non-art. A work of art is ‘not an object’, he writes. In contrast, the Modernist work defeats its objecthood by organizing an ideal aesthetic space. . . Minimal art, instead, reveals the literal space of the viewer and the viewer’s presence in this space. Placed in the center of the gallery, the Minimal work sets up a ‘theatrical’ relationship with the spectator, demanding his or her attention, much as an actor does. . . Instead of valuing the crucial role that time plays in the experience of Minimal art - the viewer circulates around the sculpture, perceiving its Gestalt in a sequence of point of view - Fried believed the viewer’s important encounter with the Modernist work occurs outside of time. Just as Modernist art exists in an ideal space, its experience is ideal. Fried describes an exalted moment of recognition removed from the mundane encounter of everyday life. The problem with Minimal art is that it destroys this pure recognition, relocating the viewer in real time and real space. 134

53 Like Minimalism sculpture, objects -- book stacks, tables, chairs, bar -- in the Book Café demand the visitor’s attention and active participation: they invite him or her to circulate around, perceive and explore them. In this café, the encounter between the objects and the visitor happens in real time and real space. By contrast, in the art research library, even “the qualified researchers” are not allowed to explore the book stacks by themselves. There, the book stacks belong to an ideal aesthetic space. They deny their objecthood. They do not allow the viewer’s presence around them. They protect themselves like precious art objects.

As a result, they lack the very essence of Minimalism art: Minimalism art is incomplete without the viewer.

Like Minimalism sculpture, objects in the Book Café are made with industrial materials.

It was Minimalism artists who highlighted the beauty of industrial materials. Judd said:

The use of three dimensions makes it possible to use all sorts of materials and colors. Most of the work involves new materials, either recent inventions or things not used before in art. Little was done until lately with the wide range of industrial products. . . Art could be mass-produced. . . . Materials vary greatly and are simply materials – Formica, aluminum, cold-rolled steel, Plexiglas, red and common brass and so forth. They are specific. If they are used directly they are more specific. Also, 135 they are usually aggressive.

As Judd said, industrial materials have powerful and aggressive quality. They, however, can be elegant and beautiful. The Minimalism artists proved it -- even though that might not have been their intention. In the Book Café, book stacks are black steel, reading tables are plywood, sittings is red-painted steel, bar is stainless steel, and the espresso station is a mix of brushed aluminum and black plexiglas. The flooring throughout is unfinished hardwood.

54 22. Book Café, View from the entry . 23. Book Café, View toward the espresso station.

The design of Book Café aims to capture the essence of the Minimalism art: its eloquent simplicity and its relationship with viewers. In Minimalism art, there is no hidden meaning. Everything is all about the sensuous experience with objects. In this café, viewers experience the objects under varying light conditions. As Morris said, they are “ [functions] of space, light and the viewer’s field of vision.”

24. Book Café, south elevation.

25. Book Café, north elevation.

55 Conclusion

In 1973, Carter Brown told a reporter from the Washington Post that the new cafeteria at the National Gallery would be “more interesting visually than the cafeteria at the

Metropolitan Museum, for which the décor was done by Dorothy Draper in the 1930s.”

Amused, he added that “it had been referred to by a former Director of the Metropolitan as

136 ‘the pain in the atrium.’” That was nearly forty years ago. Though the dining facilities designed during his tenure may not be the pain of the Gallery yet, they are certainly no longer visually interesting.

This project began with the desire not only to glamorize two outdated cafés within two buildings of the National Gallery, but also to respond to their roles in society. The West

Building and the East Building, which were created 30 years apart, represent different values of the art museum. The West Building has been pursuing aesthetic idealism since its opening in 1941. The beauty of the collection and the harmony of the display are the primary goals of this building. It provides a tranquil environment removed from the outside world for aesthetic contemplation. Café Repose follows this ideal: the main focus of the design is the beauty of the space and the harmony of the each area in this café. Its aesthetic reflects the collection and architectural style of the building where it resides. The West Building represents social elites’ -- the founder, the architect and the donors -- romanticism about past European culture. Café Repose captures the alluring elegance of the old world and conveys the feeling of nostalgia for times which no longer exist. Here, people are transported to a different time and place. Like the West Building, the new café functions as a serene sanctuary far removed from the real world.

56 While the West Building has been clearly taking an elitist approach in its ideal, the East

Building has shown the ambivalent attitude of its creators. Here, blunt elitism and populism coexist. Carter Brown wanted to appeal to scholars and connoisseurs with the art research center, and attract the general public with the museum. To connect these two areas conceptually and physically, the Book Café is envisioned on their border. In a society where art and cultural knowledge are regarded as elite privileges, we need a place that enables us to be more accessible to this knowledge. The Book Café, in its program and design, aims to foster understanding of works of contemporary art which seem so esoteric to the general public. This café enhances the Gallery’s image as a leading cultural institution in the nation’s capitol.

Today, dining facilities have become part of museum culture. While it cannot be stated that the cafés should be regarded as equal to the museum’s collection, their influence upon the visitors should not be underestimated. As Louis Kahn once said, the visitor’s first urge, upon entering the museum, is to go get a cup of coffee in the café.137

57 List of Illustration

1. John Russell Pope’s sketch for the National Gallery West Building, 1938. From Phillip Kopper, America’s National Gallery of Art (New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991) / 9 2. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin From Andrew McClellan, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2008) / 11 3. National Gallery West Building Interior view From Phillip Kopper, America’s National Gallery of Art / 18 4. National Gallery East Building Interior view From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective / 18 5. I. M. Pei’s conceptual sketch for the East Building From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective / 21 6. The Modern, New York , The bar room / 28 7. The Modern, New York , The formal dining room / 28 8. The Pompidou Center, Paris / 29 9. The Restaurant Georges, From www.jacobmacfarlane.com / 29 10. The Neue Galerie, New York, From www.neuegalerie.org / 32 11. Café Sabarsky, From www.neuegalerie.org / 32 12. Café Fledermaus , From www.neuegalerie.org / 32 13. Garden Café, Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Archives / 33 14. Terrace Café, Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Archives / 35 15. John Singer Sargent, Repose (1911), National Gallery of Art / 40 16. Café Repose, dining room / 41 17. Café Repose, tea room / 43 18. Café Repose, bar / 45 19. National Gallery East Building Library, From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective / 47 20. Robert Morris, Untitled, (1967), From Anthony Alofsin, ed. A Modernist Museum in Perspective / 51 21. Donald Judd, Untitled Object, (1969), National Gallery of Art / 51 22. Book Café, View from the entry / 55 23. Book Café, View toward the espresso station / 55 24. Book Café, south elevation / 55 25. Book Café, north elevation / 55

58 N o t e s

1.Marstine,ed., New Museum Theory and Practice, 12. 2. McClellan, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao, 200-201. (hereafter cited as Art Museum) 3. Ibid., 220. 4. Ibd., 193-195. 5. Manask and Schechter, The Complete Guide to Foodservice in Cultural Institutions, 1. 6. Heydari, “Where art tastes great”, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22709528/ (accessed August 17, 2009). 7. See Alofsin, ed., A Modernist Museum in Perspective: The East Building, National Gallery of Art, 40. (hereafter cited as Modernist Museum) According to Neil Harris, when the East Building was planned and designed, the new foodservice facilities were one of Carter Brown’s major concerns. He researched other museum dining facilities and was absorbed into restaurant planning since the late 1960s. 8. Manask and Schechter, The Complete Guide to Foodservice in Cultural Institutions, 14. 9. National Gallery of Art, “Mission Statement,” 2009, www.nga.gov/xio/mission.htm (accessed November 9, 2009) 10. According to Alan Wallach, there are two historical preconditions for establishing national museums and national galleries of art. He writes: “The first precondition is that there be a centralized state power with the abil- ity to create and sustain national institutions. It follows that when such a power exists, particular institutions and groups may claim national status and in some situations be capable of designating themselves ‘national,’ though their claims will, in the long run, be of relatively little consequence without the state’s imprimatur. Second, the state must experience a need for a national gallery and a national collection. Needs of this sort vary, but they fall into two broad categories: the need to address a national audience- to represent the nation itself in a particular form and thereby play a role in shaping it as, what Benedict Anderson calls, an ‘imagined community.’ And, the need to address an international audience and thus represent the nation in relation to other nations.” Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction, 22. 11. Kopper, America’s National Gallery of Art: A gift to the Nation, 100. (hereafter cited as National Gallery) 12. Ibid., 85. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 114. 16. Ibid,. 115. 17. Ibid., 122.

59 18. Senator Tom Cornally of Texas said : “To my mind it is only a question of whether we will take this bill or leave it. The Government is no pauper. We could build our own gallery, and the Government could run it. Then if a constituent paints a picture and brings it to us we can put it in the gallery. We’ll run the gallery like the people want it run. . . .” Ibid., 123. 19. Kopper writes that: “The Federal Triangle, comprised seventy acres, would contain twelve enormous federal buildings and would have a huge and lasting impact on Washington. It gave the city a government core as clas- sically derived as any on earth- and the most dehumanizing, some argued. The Bauhaus school… was on the rise and its exponents carped about the Triangle’s “facadism.” One pronounced it a complex of “brutal stone masses built in an eclectic style as boring as it was massive and unoriginal.”… the Triangle plan bowed to tradition: government centers have often been intended to impress- not to seem of ordinary scale, but to awe the citizens who visit or bring business to them. This is not “democratic” notion of Jacksonian egalitarianism, but an even older one that had been invoked when the Capital was built, to say nothing of the great capitals of Europe.” Kopper, National Gallery, 82. 20. Ibid., 129-130. 21. McClellan, Art Museum, 67-68. 22. Kopper, National Gallery, 135. 23. Ibid. 24. McClellan, Art Museum, 66. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 70. 27. Kopper, National Gallery, 138. 28. McClellan, Art Museum, 113. 29. Ibid., 115. 30. See Joachimides and Rosenthal, ed., American Art in the 20th Century, 13. 31. McClellan, Art Museum, 201. 32. Joachimides and Rosenthal, ed., American Art in the 20th Century, 151. 33. Kopper, National Gallery, 189. 34. Ibid., 193. 35. Ibid., 206. 36. Wallach, Exhibiting Contradiction, 25. 37. See Wallach, “William Wilson Corcoran’s Failed National Gallery”, Ibid., 22-37. 38. See Joachimides and Rosenthal,ed., American Art in the 20th Century, 152. 39. http://www.phillipscollection.org/about/history/duncan.aspx, (accessed March 18, 2010) 40. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum, 23. 41. Ibid., 26.

60 42. Ibid., 27. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Kopper, National Gallery, 295. 49. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum, 28. 50. Ibid., 35-36. 51. McClellan, Art Museum, 45. 52. Ibid., 46. 53. Ibid., 42. 54. Ibid., 44. 55. Kopper, National Gallery, 171-173. 56. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum, 129. 57. Ibid., 40. 58. McClellan, Art Museum, 49. 59. Jodidio and Strong, I.M.Pei Complete Work, 134. 60. Ibid., 139. 61. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum, 35. 62. Ibid., 36. 63. Ibid., 47. 64. Ibid., 50. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid.,51. 67. McClellan, Art Museum, 161. 68. Ibid. 69. Joachimides and Rosenthal, ed., American Art in the 20th Century, 9. 70. Ibid., 156. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 16. 73. http://www.bentelandbentel.com/test1024.html (accessed November 23, 2009) 74. Ibid. 75. Lange, “Modern Mediation,” http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20050516/modern-mediation (accessed January 30, 2010)

61 76. http://www.bentelandbentel.com/test1024.html (accessed November 23, 2009) 77. McClellan, Art Museum, 84. 78. Ibid., 86. 79. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/pompidou/Communication.nsf/0/88D (Accessed November 10, 2009) 80. Ibid. 81. Interview with by Jacob + Macfarlane d’Architecture 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Kotler, Museum Marketing and Strategy, 142. 87. http://www.neuegalerie.org/museum/cafe/sabarsky.html (accessed September 8, 2009) 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Manask and Schechter, The Complete Guide to Foodservice in Cultural Institutions, 165-171. 91. McClellan, Art Museum, 3. 92. Marstine, ed., New Museum Theory and Practice, 10. 93. McClellan, Art Museum, 45. 94. Ibid., 44. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid., 49. 97. Ibid., 49-50. 98. Ibid. 99. Kilmurray and Ormond, eds., John Singer Sargent, 11 100. Ibid. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., 31. 103. Ibid., 34-35. 104. Ibid., 36. 105. Ibid., 38. 106. Thames & Hudson, National Gallery of Art, 248 107. Kilmurray and Ormond, eds., John Singer Sargent, 129 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid., 38. 110. Ibid., 259.

62 111. http://www.nga.gov/resources/index.shtm ( accessed March 10, 2010) 112. McClellan, Art Museum, 42. 113. Ibid. 114. Ibid., 84-86. 115. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/pompidou/Communication.nsf/0/88D (Accessed November 10, 2009) 116. Meyer, Minimalism, 15. 117. Ibid., 210. 118. Ibid., 218. 119. Ibid., 33. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid., 34. 122. Ibid. 123. Varnedoe, Picture of Nothing, 56-57. 124. Ibid., 100. 125. Ibid., 101. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid. 128. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum,57 ?? 129. Ibid., 57. 130. Ibid., 59. 131. Ibid., 219. 132. Ibid., 235. 133. Ibid., 235. 134. Ibid.,33. 135. Ibid., 210. 136. Alofsin, ed., Modernist Museum, 40. 137. Marstine,ed., New Museum Theory and Practice, 15.

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